


Child's Play

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: mcsmooch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-28
Updated: 2008-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John—being John, Rodney thinks—gets bizarrely enthusiastic about the strangest things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child's Play

**Author's Note:**

> For kimberlyfdr, who wanted Jeannie to catch them kissing.

John—being John, Rodney thinks—gets bizarrely enthusiastic about the strangest things. Getting a crappy plastic ninja shooting star in his cereal in the morning, or gently burping Teyla's kid after a feeding so that little Conor leaves a trail of white all down the back of his black t-shirt, or being asked by Jeannie if he might arrange for a discount for Maddy's school, because they loved his most recent game so much: strange things, all of them, but they each make John's mouth curve up into a smile that can't be anything but genuine.

And also because John is John—another section of Rodney's Grand Theorem of John, which frankly is going to need footnotes fairly soon, because John isn't just complicated, he seems to exist in eleven dimensions in some kind of weird proof of string theory—he ends up not only donating half a dozen software bundles to the school free of charge, but he insists on visiting the school to install it himself. He's done it before, Rodney knows—loaded his stuff onto ancient Pentium PCs and made the kids laugh while he imitated (with limited success) the various noises Ronon made as a soundtrack to the game.

Normally, John drags Ronon along with him, something that Ronon puts up with mostly good-naturedly—he gets on well with kids, it's not like the tiny start-up company takes up much of his time or his accounting skills yet, plus he always gets a lot of requests to re-enact his most popular character. ("RARR," says Ronon the Lion.)

But it's tax season and the fledgling accountancy firm Ronon's running on the side is taking off, and John makes a very good case as they're getting ready the night before that, well, Madison is _Rodney's_ niece. Rodney does protest—points out that he has papers to correct by students who have actually—who have mostly—who are _supposed_ to have memorised their nine times tables by now, but he's never been very good at resisting John when he pouts like that. Or when he wraps himself round Rodney when they're lying in bed later between clean sheets and says, "Rodney, _please_," dragging his vowels out in such an appallingly annoying way that Rodney's eyes slam open and he stares at the ceiling in exasperation.

He has absolutely never been any good at playing Uncle Mer—the last time he'd had to do so for a day, when Jeannie and Kaleb had both come down with the flu, he'd been swarmed by six-year-olds the instant he stepped through the door of the school to collect Maddy. There had been raised voices and tears—mostly on the part of the six-year-olds—by the time he'd got Maddy's coat on and was ushering her out the door.

"I'm not very good at that sort of thing," he tells John stiffly; but John can be freakishly persistent at times, and the next morning he's helping John lug stuff into the school while Jeannie makes small talk with Mrs Tibbetts, the teacher, and Maddy and half a hundred other hellions put on an astounding display of their lung capacity.

Once inside, John sets up the little games and toys he uses while he talks the kids through software and the best way to use the internet extras. Rodney drifts towards the back of the classroom, and pokes at the PCs sitting there. Then he's frowning at them, then he's tinkering with them, and by the time he's finished upgrading their memory performance so that they're not _glacially_ slow, John's sitting cross-legged on the ground with sixteen kids listening to him, rapt.

Rodney's mouth quirks when he sees that John's got a sock puppet on either hand—badly stitched to look like a lion and an elephant, cannibalised from two big striped socks that Mrs Dex had made for her younger son one Christmas—and he's using them to recount to the kids a stirring tale of the African savannah that sounds like it could have come from the mind of Tim Burton: the _Lion King_ by way of _Nightmare Before Christmas_.

He's about to sneak out of the room and leave John to it, join Jeannie and Mrs Tibbetts in the staffroom where there's bound to be coffee that he can liberate into his custody, but John sees him before he can make good his escape. "Rodney," he says, cocking an eyebrow, "Wanna join us?"

He tries to protest, but he's powerless in the face of Maddy's yell of "YEAH, UNCLE MER!" Apparently, once the child has spoken, he must obey; he sits down next to John with a long-suffering sigh, tries to ignore John's smirk with a sense of wounded dignity, and he steadfastly doesn't redden when John shares a sockpuppet with him. Rodney Elephant is, perhaps, a little more defensively snarky than he should be, and there are veiled comments introduced into the dialogue which, if Jeannie has anything to say about it, won't be comprehensible to Madison until she's turned twenty-one. The kids love it unironically, though, especially when the sockpuppet lion bumps noses with the sockpuppet elephant in a kiss which John informs them solemnly symbolises the circle of life.

"I am not singing!" Rodney hisses at John when he hears that, which makes John duck his head and laugh, _har har har_.

Of course, the kids lose interest in them fairly quickly once the computers reboot, and they hear Teyla's calm, computerised voice welcoming them to the AnimalStart Safari game. Rodney thinks he might finally be able to flee outside to a haven of peace and caffeine, because his knees are _killing_ him, when John leans in close and, speaking in a high-pitched voice that somehow manages to be even dorkier than usual, wags his sockpuppet around and makes it say "See, Uncle Mer? That wasn't so hard."

The grin on John's face is cheeky and earnest, and he's forty years of age and has got a sock on his hand, and his cheeks are covered in stubble because they were running late this morning and he didn't have time to shave, and Rodney can't do anything other than lean in and kiss him. It's quick and soft, John's eyes widening at the first contact of Rodney's lips against his, then fluttering closed, and Rodney has to fight to keep it chaste: because they are sitting on a classroom floor in a pool of early spring sunshine, with his niece sitting a couple of feet away, and an army of stuffed animals on the shelves watching him with beady, beady eyes.

Mostly chaste—because when John pulls away, his lips are a little wet, and Rodney knows his cheeks must be flushed, and he can hear from the doorway behind him, Jeannie coughing significantly. John winks at him before he moves to stand, and Rodney feels a little exasperated, and a lot like this is the love that was always waiting for him, and he mumbles "Hmm, child's play," when John gives him his hand to pull him up.


End file.
